Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram suffered a major outage from 9 PM on October 4 in several countries including India. Initially, people suspected it to be a network issue but later came to know that three social media platforms were affected.
There are around 53 crores WhatsApp users, 21 crore Instagram users and 41 crore Facebook users in India, and the outage for several hours has greatly impacted the users.
When the users tried reaching the Facebook page when it was down, “An unexpected error has occurred. We are in the process of resolving it, was displayed.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
During this worldwide outage, the Facebook page has tweeted, ”We are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we are sorry. We have been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us”.
A day before the outage, a Facebook whistleblower has revealed her identity on American Television, “Facebook several times prioritizes money over hatred posts, kids’ mental health and curbing misinformation.
The 37-year old Data Scientist Frances Haugen from Europe is working as a Product Engineer in Facebook. She has worked in Google and Pinterest before. She has mentioned Facebook as the worst when compared to the other companies in an interview for CBS’s “60 Minutes” program.
In the 60 Minutes interview, “Facebook company is to be regulated. Facebook proves that it prioritizes money over safety repeatedly. It optimizes profit over our safety. Nowadays, Facebook posts spread hatred all over the world. Facebook research itself shows that Facebook posts inspire people’s anger over other emotions. The News Feed Algorithm is optimized in such a way. It is based on the engagement of users. Facebook knew that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site and click on less ads, make less money”, she said.
The outage after her interview is viewed as a second fall for the company. The stocks of Facebook which has approximate 2 billion everyday users have started falling by 5.3% after the whistleblower’s report.
According to the New York Times, which cited two anonymous Facebook security team members, the outage was not likely a result of a cyberattack because the technology behind the apps was still different enough that one hack was not likely to affect all of them at once.
Reuters reported, “Security experts say that this malfunction may be the result of an internal error (faulty configuration) and that it is practically possible for the error to occur”.
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Facebook and all of its apps go down simultaneously.
facebook instagram down thousands users downdetectorcom
